Contents

Introduction

As the prime symbolic agent of government, the president has
always been a focus of the press. His position is unique in politics
in that he receives a disproportionate share of media attention.
This attention has increased dramatically in the last 40 years.
Only 15 reporters were present when Harry Truman announced the
use of nuclear weapons against Japan. Today, approximately 1,800
reporters hold passes to the White House pressroom (Smoller
18). Some of this increase probably originates in the president's
expanded influence in daily affairs that flowed from the New Deal,
but much of it can be attributed to the growth of television and
its special needs. The president provides a convenient focus for
the cameras in a way that the legislature can not. One result
is that Americans have come to rely on evening news programs as
their main source of information about the president (Ranney).
The focus of this paper will be to examine this special relation
and how it affects us as members of a democratic society.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, the basic
purpose of American broadcasting is "the development of an
informed public opinion through the dissemination of news and
ideas concerning the vital public issues of the day" (qtd. in Smoller 1). How well does television
news live up to this mandate? How faithfully and wisely do the
networks interpret the "vital public issues of the day"?
In particular, how well do the networks serve the viewing public
with their coverage of the president? It is my contention that
production elements of evening news programs make them inherently
incapable of satisfying this mandate. The medium of television
itself shapes the content of presidential coverage in ways that
are not always in the best interests of the viewer.

Elements of television news

There are three elements of television news production that
I consider problematic:

Visual news

Television is primarily a visual medium. This has meant that
in order for networks to attract viewers they must cater to television's visual imperative. "There is," according to "CBS
Evening News" producer Susan Zirinsky, "a real big mandate
for pieces to not be boring — no standup, no bland-looking stuff.
CBS News wants it to be more visually enticing.... People are
not going to watch if [it's] just a standup" (Smoller
12). This need for visuals leads television news to distort
the functioning of the presidency by emphasizing those aspects
favorable to pictures and ignoring those that are not. It encourages
the coverage of conflict and controversy while disregarding the
comparatively routine functions of government. Actions — like signing
a bill or a presidential golf game — receive more attention and
have greater impact than processes — like negotiations or the development
of policy.

Jimmy Carter's presidency suffered seriously during the Iran
hostage crisis because of television's inability to portray processes.
Descriptions of the president's actions had to compete with emotionally
charged shots of angry Iranian students burning the American flag.
As a result, he received little credit for efforts to free the
hostages. The complexities of the negotiating process or the limits
to presidential power do not lend themselves to sixty second news
reports. Said Hodding Carter, the State Department's spokesman
at the time, "It was terrible coverage.... There are bad
mobs in the street, there is a slightly crazed, fanatical Khomeni,
here's the government spokesman, and here's our story. That's
not journalism, for God's sake, that's theater" (qtd.
in Keebler 5).

Videotape is often edited to intensify the activity being reported,
focusing on those sections with the most action. The 30-second
instance of Gerald Ford walking, stumbling briefly, and then resuming
his pace was edited to a much shorter piece that focused just
on the stumble. In concentrating on the frames with the most action
the viewer never learned why the president fell or that he got
up immediately afterwards. In his memoirs, he recounts the incident:

I jumped to my feet, unhurt and thought nothing of the fall.... I
was quite surprised when Ron Nessen told me later that reporters
covering my trip were bombarding him with questions about my
'missteps' (289).

The needs of television news had created a lasting image of
the president from two seconds or less of videotape.

There was no doubt in my mind that I was the most athletic
president to occupy the White House in years... [but] from that
moment on, every time I stumbled or bumped my head or fell in
the snow, reporters zeroed in on that to the exclusion of almost
everything else. The news coverage was harmful.... [This] helped
create the public perception of me as a stumbler. And that wasn't
funny (289).

Another problem with pictures is that they tend to simplify,
and exaggerate political events. The result are symbolic, black
and white, good and evil depictions of complex phenomena.
For example, gas pumps, supermarket checkout lines, and housing
construction, are shown to represent the issues of energy, inflation,
and gross national product, respectively. These examples are often
associated with what Carl Jensen, professor of communication at
Sonoma State University, calls the "Yo-Yo news — the stock
market is up or down, the unemployment rate is up or down, the
inflation rate is up or down, the crime rate is up or down..."
(Jensen 68). At other times, stories are
personalized by using experts, spokesmen, or random representative
groups — poor or unemployed persons, for example (Edwards
147). Such images serve as a kind of short hand for the producers.
This use of thematic elements means that correspondents
and producers do not have to explain the background of a particular
story each time they report on it (Smoller
4).

Mike Deaver, deputy chief of staff during Reagan's first term,
relied heavily on the symbolic nature of television news to get
the president's message across.

When the economy started to pick up toward the end of 1980
we were searching for any development that we could showcase
to reflect a good trend. I had the president fly to Fort Worth...and
he made an announcement at a housing development there, surrounded
by a bunch of construction workers in hard hats. You only get
forty to eighty seconds on any given night on the network news,
and unless you can find a visual that explains your message you
can't make it stick (Deaver 141).

Easily recognizable symbols encourage people to project themselves
into the story, but they may not help in illuminating them and
may even serve to promote essentially false messages. The Reagan
administration used to entice television with carefully orchestrated moments knowing that the power of the images would override
the accompanying narration no matter how negative. Lesley Stahl
did a piece for the "CBS Evening News" that tried to
point out the contradiction between the messages implied in the
photo opportunities and the actual policies of the president.
Pictures of the president at the Handicapped Olympics and the
opening of an old age home were matched with Stahl's voice over
of budget cuts for the disabled and elderly. As she found out
later the report was a failure.

We just didn't get the enormity of the visual impact over
the verbal. [We] would run these pieces and say, 'While the president
went fishing today back in the White House things were falling
apart,' but no one would hear us.... I did a piece where I was
quite negative... about Reagan and yet the pictures were terrific... I
thought they'd be mad at me, but they weren't. They loved it....
[An official] said to me, 'They didn't hear you. They only saw
[the] pictures' (Moyers).

Mike Deaver also agreed.

[She had] unwittingly accomplished the purpose of the White
House in trying to be critical of [it]. In the competition between
the ear and the eye, the eye always wins (Moyers).

Narrative news

Television news' second significant impairment lies in its
need to compete on an entertainment level. While the networks
battle each other for viewers there are scores of independent
and cable stations after the same audience. There is a great deal
of pressure put on an evening news broadcast to be entertaining
and keep the viewer from flipping to the sitcom on the other channel.
The real job of the evening news is not to inform, but to entertain.

This entertainment imperative has shaped the way in which television
news stories are constructed. Television producers model individual
reports in a narrative form rather than the inverted
pyramid form of a newspaper article. With the inverted pyramid
format, the most important information is presented first and
the least important information last. Television, on the other
hand, tells stories. According to former NBC News president Reuven
Frank, "Every news story should, without any sacrifice of
probity or responsibility, display [the] attributes of fiction
[and] drama. It should have structure and conflict; problem and
denouncement; rising action and falling action; a beginning, a
middle, and an end" (qtd. in Epstein 41).

The narrative format reinforces television's simplistic portrayal
of the president. Reports are cast as melodramas. Their primary
objective being not to inform, but to entertain. Correspondents
are forced to define complicated issues and vague personalities
sharply. Thus presidents and presidential candidates are often
portrayed in broad winner or loser terms or as stereotypes — The
Klutz, The Incompetent, The Great Communicator, The Wimp, etc.
Other political actors are portrayed as heroes or villains — and
some have been both. The tendency is to dramatize and personalize
events for the sake of a story.

These inclinations are particularly evident in the explanations
the media routinely gives for economic and foreign policy dilemmas.
Such problems typically have long and complex histories and no
single, simple cause. However, since the story requires a villain
and a straight plot, a scapegoat has to be found. For years television
told us to blame everything on the Russians, but the fall of communism
has seen Mikhail Gorbachev go from undisputed master of the "Evil
Empire" to political obscurity. Who television will choose
to replace the Soviets remains to be seen — "Cocaine Kingpins",
"Mad Dog Arabs", and "Japan Inc." are all
contenders. How the president handles — or rather how television
portrays his handling of — these villains will likely determine
his presidential approval rating and thus his chances for reelection.

Authoritative news

Television is not only distinctive in its focus, but also in
its presentation. Television news is without ambiguity or uncertainty.
It is the sole possessor of authoritative news. It is this
authoritative likeness that gives TV news the ability to rise
above the visual and entertainment imperatives.

There is hardly an aspect of the staging of a television news
program that is not designed to convey an impression of authority
and omniscience. The main studio is not unlike the cockpit of
a 747 or the control room of a nuclear power plant. The banks
of television screens and the ever present world map give it the
feel of a high-tech command center. The anchor is usually male
and usually white — women and minorities having been banished to
weekends and "Newsbreaks". He typically sports a thousand
dollar suit and a hundred dollar haircut. In appearance he is
every bit the president's equal and in some ways more than that.

He is positively god-like: he summons forth men, events, and
images at will; he speaks in tones of utter certainty; he is
the person with whom all things begin and end (Weaver
84).

He presents his interpretations with great confidence, almost
as if he was a part of the events themselves. His authoritative
and detached style of the reporting and the finality of the sign-off
leave the impression that the matters discussed are essentially
closed.

In considering this, it should come as no surprise that while
the public's confidence in many national institutions has steadily
eroded, its faith in television news has increased (Bower).
This perception is no doubt founded on the anchor's mask of authority.

Implications

What implications can we draw from the methods of television
news production discussed above? The production limitations of
the half hour evening news broadcast combined with the authoritative
stance of its presentation will ensure that

presidents will place ever greater emphasis on media manipulation to achieve policy goals and that

The president as media manipulator

A recent study by Smoller concluded that the tone of the coverage
that a president receives on the evening news appears to correlate
with his Gallup support rating (41-60)
and an earlier study by Edwards found that the president's approval
rating was a good predictor of his vote share at reelection time
and of the members of his party during midterm elections (8-37). It is thus imperative for the successful
execution of the office that the president receive positive network
news coverage. A president knowledgeable in the workings of television
can use it to shape public opinion, to gain support for his policies,
and to boost his chances of political survival. White House aides
are told to pay particular attention to how the president is portrayed
on the news.

Every president since Eisenhower has had to contend with television,
but none has been as successful as Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately
for the American people, in protecting his television image Reagan
forgot the substance of being president. In the words of Leslie
Janka, a deputy White House press secretary,

This was a PR outfit that became president and took over the
country. And to the degree... to which the Constitution forced
them to do things like make a budget, run foreign policy and
all that, they sort of did. But their first, last, and overarching
activity was public relations (qtd. in
Hertsgaard 3).

High-level aides and the president himself spent an inordinate
amount of time on image-making and image-enhancing activities
and less on substantive matters.

Every moment of every public appearance was scheduled, every
word was scripted, every place where Reagan was expected to stand
was chalked with toe marks. The president was always being prepared
for a performance, and this had the inevitable effect of preserving
him from confrontation and the genuine interplay of opinion,
question, and argument that form the basis of decision (Regan
248).

Some media watchers believe television news actually became
an extension of the Reagan White House. So powerful and pervasive
is the impact of television that the White House has remade itself
in television's image, along the lines of evening news needs.
No modern president has held fewer press conferences, kept the
press at a greater distance, or stage-managed presidential events
more brilliantly (Smoller 2). Network needs
influence the timing and nature of all the president's activities.
Most press conferences were held during prime time. The aim here
was to avoid reports and commentaries on the network evening news
shows that spotlighted presidential mistakes and stumbles and
ignored those parts of the conference in which the president performed
well (Weisman 73). Those efforts resulted
in favorable coverage of the president and his policies. Such
coverage contributed to Reagan's tremendous popularity.

What made relations with the press especially vital to the
success of the Reagan White House was that most of his policies
were farther to the right of the majority of Americans than the
common wisdom would have us believe. American public opinion at
the time was not moving rapidly to the right. If anything it was
shifting slightly leftward during that period — partly in response
to Reagan's policies (Ferguson & Rogers
qtd. in Hertsgaard 6-7). Many of the administration's educational
goals were extremely unpopular with the public. Cuts in federal
student loan programs, classifying ketchup as a vegetable in hot
lunches, and strong sentiments toward eliminating the Department
of Education altogether were rightly perceived as heartless. To
counteract the public's negative impressions, Reagan's White House
handlers had him travel the country, meeting with students and
teachers in front of the television cameras and calling for improvements
in educational quality. Not surprisingly, the eye won again. "The
polls absolutely flip-flopped," said Deaver in a later interview.
"[On the educational issue the president] went from a negative
rating to a positive rating overnight" (qtd.
in Weisman 71). By manipulating the press, the Reagan White
House team had once again successfully subverted democracy for
political gain.

I do not mean to imply that presidents can avoid pandering
to the needs of TV news. On the contrary, when the White House
is not imposing its agenda on television, the networks will impose
their own agenda on the White House (Bagdikian).
Jody Powell, President Carter's press secretary, is also convinced
that future administrations will have to copy the methods of news
management developed by the Reagan administration to remain politically
viable. "There are a lot of people going to school on this
administration," he said. "[One] of the lessons is that
the press's bark is much worse than its bite.... [You] can cut
severely into the flow of information and manage it with a much
firmer hand than we were able or willing to do" (qtd.
in Hertsgaard 7).

Reagan's isolation from the press was so effective that virtually
the only access they had to him were the infamous cupped ear interviews (Buchanan 123). Before boarding
the presidential helicopter, while standing at its door, a member
of the White House press corps was allowed to shout out a question
to the president. They were rarely substantial and the roar of
the blades provided a convenient excuse for not answering those
that were. The president shouted back a response more reminiscent
of small talk than political discourse and promptly disappeared
into the helicopter.

The weakening of democracy

The result of television's special news needs and subsequent
presidential manipulations is the weakening of American democracy.
We have already seen its destructive effects in the military campaigns
of the last twelve years. Aware of television's impact on public
support for the Vietnam War, the White House barred reporters
from covering the invasions of Grenada and Panama and severely
curtailed their reporting in the war against Iraq. The media's
sheep-like submission to the press restrictions in the Gulf War
is perhaps the most sad. Serious questions about our involvement
in the Gulf took a back seat to endless Pentagon press briefings
and videogamelike "smart bomb" footage. The policies
and processes that lead us to the war were never discussed and
the American people are the worse for it.

The ultimate insult to democracy is that we have come to expect
a docile press. A national survey by the Times Mirror Center for
the People and the Press reported that a full 87% of the American
public had a great deal or fair amount of confidence that the
military was giving an accurate picture of how the war was going
and a majority 57% believed that the military was not exerting enough control over the media (qtd. in
Jensen 74). Keep in mind that this was a war where the military
exerted the tightest controls over press coverage yet seen in
recent history. The American people have become apathetic to the
value of a free press and unaware that, in the process of restricting
coverage, they have undermined their own constitutional rights.

Finally, with its authoritative trappings, television news
seems to be saying that ordinary people cannot manage politics
and should not try. The insinuation is that politics belongs to
a sphere that includes journalists and other political elites,
but excludes the audience (Hallin and Mancini
847). In this respect television is profoundly antidemocratic.

Conclusions

The needs of the commercial networks have subverted the values
of the Constitution. Television news has replaced the "vital
public issues of the day" with the wallpaper of good visuals.
Efforts by the White House to manipulate news coverage have subverted
democratic values. The president is increasingly isolated from
the people and as citizens we are being deprived of the information
needed to evaluate his performance.